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Hackers Post Anti-War Message on UN Website

The United Nations' official Website encountered a hacking attack on August 12, 2007 as it displayed a brief message criticizing the policies of United States and Israel on the Middle East.

The site reserves a section for statements by Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. This section was showing a message appearing several times saying that the hack is by kerem125 M0sted and Gsy as Cyber Protest. Then it called on Israel and USA not to kill people for they wanted peace and no war.

A UN spokesman, Alex Cerniglia, said in a statement that they were concerned about the incident and were investigating into it. World News published the statement on August 13, 2007. The organization would make necessary changes in its Website security to prevent another incidence of this kind, Cerniglia added.

The illegitimate message vanished from the site at around 9.15am. But it appeared on other pages that usually post the Secretary General's speeches and quotes.

The www.m0sted.org Website cited the hacker's name saying that Cyber Protest aims to say that the powerful and strong have no right to act tyrannical on the weak and powerless.

It says that the Byond Crew Hack Team and Eno7 launched the move, which is now being carried on by other hackers - kerem125, m0sted and gsy. The site says Cyber Protest hopes the three hackers would also be successful.

According to Eno7, who calls himself/herself an IT security specialist, the launch of Cyber Protest followed the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006.

Eno7's Website says the chief persons behind this protest are Eno7 himself/herself who belongs to Turkey and the Byond Crew Hack Team from Chile. They expanded their efforts with the joining of nine other nations, the site says.

The group targeted prominent institutions instead of Websites at random because they did not want to disrupt them with stupid messages but send a serious message to stop war, the site says.

The Website lists the institutions whose sites were hacked like MSN Italy, Yahoo Korea, Sony, Cocacola, Toyota, Renault and several Israeli and US universities. Ban Ki-moon's section on the UN Website was temporarily closed.